Dennis Hollingsworth

Dive Tables

I missed a day long dive trip this week, a sacrifice for the altar of Art. Jordi was suggesting I accompany him and his friends as they go to Palamos and to several sites twenty miles out to sea, an excursion promising to last all day. He's one of those deep water snorkelers, 20 -30 meters I think it was he said. We went out locally one recent weekend, and I thought it was strange that he went into the water with a flashlight in the afternoon. He had these elongated fiberglass fins that he used to shoot off like a rocket, it was insane how fast he was. He taught me how you can kick down to see fish taking shelter underneath rock overhangs, his flashlight crashing many fish parties that day. He had a depth gauge too, so I recorded a 14.8 meter dive, woohoo.

On the day he invited me, I got a dose of dive theory in Castella?o. There's a point halfway to the bottom where we have negative buoyancy, so one can kick down to the halfway mark and let gravity do the rest to economize on oxygen use. Lastre fijo are fixed weights, lastre variable are the ones you doff off when you get to the bottom. The graph on the bottom is a time/depth axis with a curve that delineates the safety zone. I lightened up the classroom with a question of why we can't use small bottles to catch a breath of air to lengthen the dive: shorter time, deeper depth. Ha ha, silly me. (?)